I do not want my grief to go away, to dissolve. I do not want to get rid of it.

I just want it to be locked up in the box, deep inside me, so that I can go about the day smiling and wishing people 'Good Day'.

But when I am alone, I want to open that box and then slowly that grief flows through my blood , my being and overpowers me, like the alcohol and I get drunk on it and soak in it.

The next morning, I wake up with its hangover but  will put my make up back on face with kohl lined eyes when I open the door of my appt., my grief is carefuly locked away again so the rays of the rising sun cant touch it or the laughter of the children cant hurt it.

It is safe and loved and cherished.

Balance

Everytime you reach close to any goal that you have set for yourself, you realise that its not enough, there's a long path ahead of whatever you had set to achieve in the first place, that destination is not as beautiful as you had imagined, its muddled with its own problems or rusty inside or completely unlivable and then you realise that your journey is not over here, you have to keep moving on.

I was always a person who was extremely self conscious, under confident and very sensitive. so much so that I would be hurt by body language of a person or some perceived negative hints from people. I used to look at people who were confident , you know those who are born confident, who do not take no for an answer or are not afraid of rejection and arent even bogged down or haunted by rejections.

I always wanted to be one of those people, ultra confident. i used to wonder confidence was the key to everything, all my personality problems so I worked hard on developing my confidence. boosting myself, with help of encouraging friends, books yes right those self help books, I developed my confidence upto a very high level.

At this level, I realised that absolute confidence, just like under confidence is also not good. The naturally confident people who never doubt themselves are very much in the danger of becoming foolish. Self doubt has its own value. When you doubt yourself once in a while you strive to improve yourself. When I thought I was not a good conversationalist, I attributed that fact to my not having confidence but with that I realised that I should also have something to say in every situation, so I started reading up, watching news and generally trying to acquire more knowledge on the subjects and then watching and learning from the people that I admired as great conversationalists.

When you are absolutely confident, you become self absorbed. Its easy for these people to fall in the ditch of 'I am awesome as I am'. Then I wonder, if people who never doubt themselves also never try to become better as a person. Is it possble that in the long run they just end up foolish and hollow.

When I was at the precipice of becoming that confident person, a person who is sure of herself all of the time.  I realised I did not want to be that person, my self doubt, my questioning my own self has made me the person that I am today. And If I become too sure of myself how long is it before I turn into the narcissistic slob who is too full of herself.

Like everything else in life, its all about balance. A balance of assured confidence and still nurturing that self doubt. Not a crippling self doubt but a more evolved self doubt, which will drive you to continuous learning.

So the next path I am on now is seeking balance of this two.

I am also very sure that when I get to this destination I will see my next from there. but right now my word of the day, week, month or year is 'Balance'.

Is population really our problem

Was with a friend yday discussing country’s problems (Yeah I now favorite pastime of middleclass of the country) and general consensus was that the biggest problem of the country is its population, but I beg to differ, I believe when you focus on the problem then you believe that the problem is the population but when you start focusing on the solution then you will think ok let’s see, so the problem is population now how to control it there are 2 ways to do it either educate everyone or China way of making a law and implementing it with an iron fist. Later is not plausible or acceptable in Indian democracy that we go to former and then we realize that the problem is not population its Education and if we go further back we see that even if we have huge population to educate at the same time we also have resources to do that and when we go further inside we realize that the actual problem is not this superficial things but the political will power to bring about the change. And then we know that we have no one to blame but ourselves.

Engagement Anniversary

So we got married and honeymoon was over in a month and I came back. Long period of separation. And then out first anniversary not wedding , just engagement anniversary. Considering our anniversary was big with around 200 hundred guests a wedding hall and big ceremony with yagnya and all which ended with exchange of rings. It was one of the most important events in our life, it was an actual beginning of our life together. Below are some photos. 

There’s  another story of our engagement too, but more on that later.

So our engagement was in October and anniversary- first one at that- came during my Diwali vacation, which I was spending at my in laws place. (My Mother in Law (MIL) had given me a strict warning that even though, her son may be in Germany I was supposed to spend the Diwali vacation with them.

I remembered our anniversary one month in advance, but that was one details I was not going to share with my husband. I planned to not tell and wait till the day and then pounce on him when he didn’t remember and sulk and spend the rest of the day sulking. (come to think of it, now I dnt know why I liked that plan so much in the first place.)

So 2 days before I tell my MIL, u know mom our engagement anniversary in coming and she knows, and so does my Father in law (FIL) and they had even planned to get a cake at home and have a small celebration.

And the day arrives and then day gets over. Next day Im reading one of my MILs Gruhshobha magazine and the character in one of the story is talking about her wedding anniversary and then I realize, I thought for a minute or 2, shall I share it with the world outside or shall I keep my shame to myself, finaly after healthy debate I said, mom wasn’t it our anniversary yesterday and then she stared at me for a few seconds before claiming that it was my FIL’s mistake all along. ( He has left for a business trip 2 days back) and apparently my MIL got too distracted due to it and forgot all about our anniversary.

Though I missed out on my chance of pouncing on my husband I still had more in my hands than he did, I called him up and asked what was yday and he could answer so I had to tell him to go and stand in a corner and think about what he did. After what I believe was 5 minutes of standing in corner he remembered what he did or actualy what he didnt, he called me and wished me arguing that I also have forgotten so I had no right to be angry. So I told him a lie about how we had celebrated  and cut a cake he was unconvinced but after repeating a lie till it becomes truth I finaly achieved the result of making him sad. (Really what kind of wife am I?)

Then when he became sad and I was sad enough and I started crying standing on the bus stop waiting for a bus to take me back to Mumbai to my lonely abode.

Kareena kapoor

I think Kareena is at such a position today that she can demand and get any role, well she can create a role for herself and get her boyfriend to produce it for her, but instead what she is doing is doing show piece roles in all her movies, Body guard (Salman Khan) Ra. One (Shahrukh Khan) 3 Idiots (Amir Khan) and being happy that she has worked with all the Khans, never thinking and wondering what exactly is she doing in all such movies, except being an eye candy.

At the same time take Vidya Balan, every role that she has chosen has been risqué, but female oriented, strong female character. She is taking her name to history books of cinema. Whatever role she does that character becomes synonymous with her be it Parineeta, Ishquiya, Pa or the recent dirty picture now. She is making sure that when tomorrow anybody talks about the cinema of yesteryears, her name should pop up all the time. While even if tomorrow anybody decides to speak about 3 idiots they will only speak about Amir and other heroes of all Karina movies.

Karina is only doing replaceable roles, if she didn’t do the Bodyguard, Katrina would or even Neha Dhupia, whats her value addition in those male dominated movies?

Whchever profession you are in, its for your own sake, you need to keep pushing the envelope or risk being obliterated from public memory as soon as you stop working. Sadly the shelf life of Bollywood heroines is even smaller.

Spontaneity

Today’s culture I do not understand why gives so much importance to spontaneity. In movies the actress will take the workaholic actor and go and sleep on the street, watching stars and then we are supposed to love that randomness in her.

While in reality I cannot imagine being that random all the time. Human beings love routine, however negativity that word may have gathered now. The best part of routine is you know, what you are going to do next, your brain gets used to the routine and nicely goes on autopilot.

Its ok to take a vacation and then be random there for few days, but in daily life, you need routine, a timetable. Imagine thinking all the time, what to do next and do only what you feel like doing, there are so many tasks in everyones life that we detest to do but that needs to be done.

And thinking every minute about what to do next I am very sure drive even the most spontaneous person insane. Our body , our brain love to go on autopilot. Have monotony in life so that subconscious part of your brain can stay active and think about other more important things.

Imagine so many scientific inventions were done, when a person was doing a routine, monotonous job and by refusing to have routine and living each day as it comes, we are denying our brain a power to do something big, just keeping him engaged in low level day to day tasks.

Its like hiring an MBA and then making him do filing all the time, different way each day, coz we are unable to develop an automated system to do so.

Locus of control

There is a concept of locus of control; it’s internal in same cases and external in others. In simple terms it means when certain things happen do you take responsibility for them or you believe that external factors were responsible or influential.

I think these days my locus of control has become too external, when I don’t get things I blame others, I blame the system, may be the problem is with me.

I remember not so far back my locus of control was so internal that whatever happened I blamed myself. If someone was snobbish it was my fault, when someone insulted me it was again my fault it was because I had done something wrong.

I have started believing that thres again nothing right or wrong with the locus being internal or external, its same as many other things in our life, there has to be a balance. When external locus of control signifies lack of ability the internal also signifies lack of self-esteem or confidence.  Both are equally hazardous.